More on self-organisation

Here is more on the chaordic principle that I sensed was missing from the firstmondy item linked below. I still don’t really get how Visa works, but I love the line ”Visa has been called “a corporation whose product is coordination.” Hock calls it “an enabling organization.” Here is the item: The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock

This is one of Dee Hock’s favorite tricks to play on an audience. “How many of you recognize this?” he asks, holding out his own Visa card.

Every hand in the room goes up.

“Now,” Hock says, “how many of you can tell me who owns it, where it’s headquartered, how it’s governed, or where to buy shares?”

Confused silence. No one has the slightest idea, because no one has ever thought about it.

And that, says Hock, is exactly how it ought to be. “The better an organization is, the less obvious it is,” he says. “In Visa, we tried to create an invisible organization and keep it that way. It’s the results, not the structure or management that should be apparent.” Today the Visa organization that Hock founded is not only performing brilliantly, it is also almost mythic, one of only two examples that experts regularly cite to illustrate how the dynamic principles of chaos theory can be applied to business.